January 20, 2017

Ever since then,
it goes like this.

We eat. We sleep.
Sometimes we dream
before getting up
and losing the thread.

We walk the same steps
to the bathroom,
the sink.
We sit down
We rise.
The floorboards creak.

We reach for our phones,
inevitably.

Click—
and free fall down holes without any roots.
Ghost walk through mirrors which enlarge and distort.
On rooftops patroled by wolves in wolf clothing,
we sit on adrenaline and wait. some. more.

Click.

Why this grief we've invited
that's just within reach?

Trump. Puerto Rico. Mass shooters and "balance."
Nuclear war. The first amendment. Environmental armageddon.

Ire comes early. Shock, then despair.
Because—none of it's as shocking as it was last year.

We put the stone in our pocket,
get ourselves off to work.

Back home, tucked in bed, we dread
what's in store for our children's kids.
Wonder at the blitheness
with which we gifted them life.
Would we change it?
No. But it's a thought.

And yet
the most of us—
we do keep our heads.
We've adjusted—roughly—to
the nightmare we live,
ears barely ringing from the blanket alarms,
eyes blindly scanning for the next savior
or devil.

Denial—oh yeah. But only in spurts.

Hope?

Oh, Obama. Hope is changed.

For fear's made us children
in our abuser's house
and hope is most dangerous
when the tyrant is scared.

And yet, what I want
on this crisp, Sunday morning
that seems, by all appearance, so ordinary
is for someone to cover
my screen with their hands
and to say:

"I don't know, either,
baby bird, little lamb.

But it's autumn outside.
Look.
All the things—they're changing again.

Point your finger out there,
to the ones you can touch.

Take the roof off the sky—
see how high we can jump."